Hubertus_Strughold

Hubertus Strughold

Dr. Hubertus Strughold (1898-1987) was born in Westphalia, Germany. He was educated at Göttingen and received a doctorate in 1922. He is the author of over 180 papers in the field of space medicine. For this reason, he has been called "The father of U.S. space medicine". Strughold was brought to the United States at the end of World War II as part of Operation Paperclip and subsequently played an important role in developing the pressure suit worn by early American astronauts.

In 1949 Strughold was made director of the Department of Space Medicine at the School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas (now the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base). Randolph’s aeromedical library was named after him in 1977, but later renamed because documents from the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal linked Strughold to medical experiments in which inmates from Dachau concentration camp were tortured and killed. As the head of Nazi Germany's Air Force Institute for Aviation Medicine, Strughold participated in a 1942 conference that discussed "experiments" on human beings carried out by the institute. The experiments included subjecting Dachau inmates to torture and death by being immersed in water, placed in air pressure chambers, forced to drink sea water and exposed to freezing temperatures. Strughold had denied approving the experiments and said he learned of them only after World War II.